Kiev is set to simulate EU integration

During the Eastern Partnership Riga summit German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President of the European Council Donald Tusk and President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker made it absolutely clear that they wouldn’t grant EU membership to Ukraine lacking both political and economic maturity for it.

They also failed to meet President Poroshenko’s high hopes of a visa-free regime with the EU. Reasonable pragmatism of the European politicians seems to have come just out of the blue for the Ukrainian ruling elite which have been using attempts to get the EU membership as a pretext for Maidan, ousting of Yanukovich, breakup of relationship with Russia, Donbas armed hostilities and dismantle of Ukrainian industry and economy.

In absence of any observable chance to join both the EU and NATO the very existence of the current regime in Kiev appears to be just senseless and all its previous efforts to seize and retain power look totally unjustified. The letter of Aivarus Abromavicius, Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine, obviously written at the point close to hysteria, and addressed to Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice-President of the European Commission, is eye-opening stuff in the context.

In the letter Abromavicius points out to direct obstacles on the way of Ukraine’s admission to the EU which cause the inability of the current Ukrainian ruling elite to ensure the relevant level of people’s trust to the country’s leadership and confidence in the line of policy pursued by Kiev. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials won’t start any reforms citing unfavorable current social and political situation, which Ukraine actually owes exactly to those very officials. Kiev hasn’t been asking for the EU membership. It’s been demanding it, threatening to collapse Ukraine. It’s been demanding it as a factual thing just, without any obligatory commitments. For a start, Kiev leaders would be thankful for any, not necessarily major, move, on the part of Brussels, absolutely formal one, just to present it to the Ukrainian citizens as some breakthrough on the way of European integration.

Sober reaction of the European politicians to this blackmailing is encouraging: they seem to have a clear vision of widespread corruption and human rights abuse in Ukraine. During the last year the civil rights’ status and the freedom of entrepreneur activities in the country have dramatically lowered instead of showing positive rise. Bulk of the European leaders has every ground to believe that Poroshenko and his team have already exploited all the possible support on their part. Further aid to Kiev may result in absolutely undesirable political risks (the support of own electorate is at stake) and heavy financial and economic burden added onto the shoulders of the EU countries. Actually these countries, amid the continuing low-intensity crisis, face the nasty prospect of risking their own stability due to continued effort to keep Ukraine afloat.

Peace is what Europe needs badly now, which is totally missed by Kiev that sees war as a good enough chance to blame the external foe for all the internal problems. The result is that there are daily victims in endless armed clashes in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, while the EU is sitting on the powder keg turning a blind eye to the illegal arms traffic from Ukraine. Kiev seems to lack any control over the process. Some experts assert, those assault rifles used in Paris during the notorious attack on Charlie Hebdo editorial office were actually of Ukrainian origin.

The best way of conduct presently is to stop using euphemisms and start calling things their true names at last. The Ukrainian state can’t survive anymore and when you try to keep it functioning you only risk taking all the EU countries down to the bottom too. Better follow the lead of some prudent politicians who just braved to put it plain. New president of Poland Andrzej Duda pointedly skipped the meeting with the Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. And German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier during his visit to Kiev voiced out so unflattering things that Ukrainian mass media outlets chose it to ignore his arrival at all.

Now, we should openly declare and make it widely known that Ukraine will never be embraced by either the EU or NATO! Common Europeans feel least inclined to pay with their own money for the so called integration expenses, to support Ukrainian manufacturers (while manufacturers in EU countries are in the red), to host Ukrainian “refugees” (Europe is pretty fed up with African ones), to ensure the security of the country where the leaders are daily demonstrating their absolute lack of care about health and security of their own citizens and scaring readiness to get whole continent involved into the war to benefit their narrow clan agenda.